SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. (Hansard, 21 July 1834)

§ Mr. Gillon

presented a number of Petitions, praying for a separation of Church and State. The first was from Lanark; the next was from the Royal Burgh of Hamilton, signed by 2,111 persons, which he had the honour to represent; and the others were from Paisley, signed by 5,100, Criff, Alyth, Leven, Dysart, Montrose, Kibbarchan, Biggar, and Dunning. These petitions, observed the hon. Gentleman, bore the signatures of upwards of 10,000 individuals. He felt assured, that the Dissenters would continue, as they had done to-day, to urge, in a calm and constitutional, but in a firm and determined manner, their claim to relief from the most practical of all grievances—the domination of a favoured sect—and also would continue to urge the great truth, that the 277 Church has neither a necessary nor a beneficial connexion with the State, and that while that connexion shall subsist, dissension and enmity will continue to disgrace the Christian world. Ample proof of these miserable effects was afforded in the state of a sister country, where there existed a Church in which the hierarchy and the ecclesiastical functionaries were richly provided for, but the people for whose instruction and advantage, as it humbly appeared to him that the Church was designed, were forgotten. Would any man venture to say, that the scenes of blood and devastation which that Church had engendered, were not a disgrace to a Christian people? He regretted the decision come to by that House, that the fitting time to alter and amend the appropriation of the revenues of that Church had not yet arrived, and that much time was being lost by the investigation of a commission into a subject already but too well known. Let but a different appropriation of the overgrown revenues of the Church of Ireland be sanctioned, and, he believed, it would do more to tranquillize that unhappy country than all the Peace-preservation Acts that House might pass. The House had a goodly specimen of the Christian spirit that animated some of the high supporters of that Church, in their regret that there was not now to be enough of tyranny extended to Ireland. Any partial legislation on this subject, any more diminution of the revenues of that pampered establishment, laid, as it appeared to him, but the foundation of future change; it was only by recurring to the original formation of the Christian Church, to the just principles of a voluntary support of the great truths of inspired religion, that anomalies in legislation would terminate, and dissentious among Christians be at an end. He trusted a more liberal spirit would animate the councils of the present Administration than had actuated those of their predecessors, and that they would set in good earnest about the remedying of abuses. He felt convinced, that the voluntary Churchmen never would descend from the high ground which they had taken up, but continue perseveringly to urge the truth of the great doctrines which they advocated, and patiently wait until the reason and the justice of their case should triumph over the intolerance which might be opposed to them; and the pub- 278 lic mind was fully prepared for so great and so important a change. But, forsooth, the "No-Popery" cry was to be got up, and the isle was to be frightened from its propriety, as if Protestantism were in danger. If Protestantism had nothing to depend on but the temporalities of the Church, the loaves and fishes to be divided among the Churchmen; if she had no more lasting and sound basis, she might, indeed, be said to be in danger. Such a cry might well suit the gowned devotees in the walks of their cloister—it might scare some of the owls in the darkness of their anticipated retreats; but its promoters would find it signally fail with the community, in an age of knowledge and information like this. Let him once more deny, in the most explicit terms, the base calumnies thrown out elsewhere, and repeated in that House, that those who defended the voluntary principle were actuated by a desire of acquiring plunder for themselves. Such a doctrine was universally and unequivocally disavowed. The spoliators were the Church itself, which had laid violent hands on the property of the Roman Catholic Church, and in appropriating to their own use the tithes and other Church property, had utterly disregarded the claims which the poor undoubtedly possessed to a share in those revenues. The voluntary Churchmen regarded the property so received of the Church, as national property, available for purposes of general utility, as Parliament might determine— they denied the right of one favoured sect to appropriate it to uses exclusively their own.